Greg Parker made several changes to his Parker’s Market store in anticipation of the St. Patrick’s Day-on-Saturday crush last March.
He taped colored strips on the floor to designate checkout lines.
He prepared dozens of extra sandwiches and other ready-to-eat items.
He opened a fourth cash register.
“I thought we’d done enough, and I couldn’t have been more wrong,” Parker said. “The good news is, we can put that 20-20 hindsight to work for us this year.”
Parker’s is one of several businesses in the parade and festival zones that will make special accommodations for Savannah’s busiest holiday. With crowds projected to number between 350,000 and 400,000, operators of convenience stores, restaurants and bars, tour operators and other retailers recognize a festive day calls for drastic measures.
At Parker’s Market, staff transformed the store in St. Patrick Day’s early hours. They set up temporary trailers under the porte cochere, stocking them with the 50 top-selling food items from last year, as well as four cash-only checkout stations.
Staff also removed many of the crafts and specialty items in the store — and the shelves and racks that held them — for the day to improve traffic flow. And the cooks prepared more sandwiches and salads and fewer dinners.
“Once the line stretches out the door, people aren’t going to bother,” said Parker, who spent 14 hours at the store’s front door last year and watched potential customers stop, look and continue on down Drayton Street. “We have to make it more wide open, easier to get through. More welcoming.”
Congestion is the primary issue facing every business that’s open on St. Patrick’s Day. One of the newest downtown watering holes, B&D Burgers on Ellis Square, underwent an overnight makeover.
Staff took all booths, tables and chairs out of the first-floor dining room, set up beer tubs and an additional bar and locked the overhead doors separating the dining room from the courtyard in the up position. They positioned a concession stand on the patio and will use the courtyard gates for ingress and egress to the property.
The restaurant will still offer table service, albeit on a limited menu, in the second-floor dining room.
Owner David Tonroe has made similar accommodations in the past at his Broughton Street store, but the new location’s proximity to City Market — directly across Congress Street — will make for a “big learning curve” this year.
The downtown businesses making the simplest adjustment for St. Patrick’s Day are the tour operators — most close for the day. The street closures and pedestrian traffic make it impossible to do trolley and carriage tours and difficult to conduct walking tours.
The trolley companies make money shuttling party-goers. Old Town Trolleys is working with the Westin to move Hutchinson Island parkers from the lots in the paddock area on the island’s road course to the ferry landing, as well as with area campgrounds to shuttle campers into downtown.
Old Savannah Tours and Oglethorpe Tours are operating shuttles from remote parking locations, such as the malls, Tybee and the airport.
“The parade is such a big deal and generates so much publicity for the community, whatever we lose not running tours on St. Patrick’s Day, we get back in terms of the notoriety it brings Savannah,” said Charles Brazil, general manager at Old Town Trolley Tours. “Besides, we typically work while others play. This is the one day a year where we can play.”